Shokugeki no Soma

[NeoCybercoin]

Genres: comedy, tournament
Themes: cooking, school

Plot Summary
On a mission to explore all aspects of the culinary world from the divinely decadent to the unbearably grotesque, Soma Yukihira’s ultimate goal is to become a chef that can surpass his father. He’s attends to a prestige cooking school. However, there is a catch – only less than 10% of the students graduate from this elite institution, and his father says any dream of beating him will be a joke if Soma can’t succeed.

[HorribleSubs] Shokugeki no Soma - 01 [1080p]

Been waiting so long for this one.

[MFauli]

extremely disappointing first episode. The animation is good, but ... the rest not so much. The hero seems too experienced already, Sure, he´ll go to this elitist academy, but still ...
And, ya know, as much as I like sexy scenes in anime, having so many and so crass orgasms and sexual reaction just came off as tacky.

Ill give this another 1-2 episodes before my final decision on whether to keep watching or not.

[shinta|hikari]

It really was as tacky as hell.

Also, the way they were eating that potato dish made no sense. It won't hold like that with a fork, and the slices change size every frame.

The cooking scenes were very well done. They should have toned down the fanservice and focused on that instead.

[David75]

I concurr.
They have a hell of a good storyboard with the manga, everything's in there. And they think overexageration will do that work justice?
Cooking is all about precision and delicate sensations.

Here, we get fast and dirty orgasms, much like your average hygienic fapping.

Regarding animation, yes there are so many mistakes on the slices, calves size for that land shark and the list goes on.

I just hope they've been a little over the top for first ep and they did tone it down or make it much more appropiate.
Thing is, they really messed it up and might have some of the audience just forget about such a slap in the face show.

Sadly, the father/son interactions in SD was funny, some parts were ok. But overall the first ep really ruined everything.

[NeoCybercoin]

Well the first few chapters of the manga all of those foodgasms and they are still in there just expanded greatly so it's not just being naked. After that they tone it down a lot and yes Soma has a lot of experience even in that school but that's against the other students. He isn't anywhere near as good as his father or other professional chefs are.

[David75]

Yeah, the manga also has some FS, but you can flash through it... when you can't in anime format.
So if it's not done nicely, with bad art/taste, it becomes anoying as hell, even more when it becomes heavilly repetitive.

That doesn't mean I'll refrain from watching, only that it could've been better even without the overexageration and without costing more (or less) yens to produce...

[Buffalobiian]

I haven't watched the food porn show from last season, but I imagine it was a whole lot of this as well - maybe just more cute and less obviously tits Shounen.

That was an alright episode, but nothing sets it apart from all the other shounen power-up-through-an-instutute shows so far. I'll watch this with revised expectations.

[David75]

Well, the one fom last season was getting repetitive... but was not as porno as that one.

[Ryllharu]

Considering the manga is drawn by a former hentai artist, I actually expect the foodgasms to be over the top and quite lewd. That's the point.

The problem is that when J.C. Staff animated it, they make it look a lot more like the girls (and guys) are trying their best not to pee. Every instance, from start to finish in this episode.

The clenching and quivering muscle sets were all wrong, something the manga never makes the mistake of. Add the land shark's foodgasm being about meat juices that were somehow more yellow than they are broth-colored...and the impression they make is very much the wrong one.

edit:
Even though the director worked on episodes of Nurse-Witch Komugi-chan, J.C. Staff isn't good at fanservice. They should have given this one to ARMS.

[NeoCybercoin]

[HorribleSubs] Shokugeki no Soma - 02

Main bitch of the story is introduced. Also...Soma is quite the troll.

[Ryllharu]

Bitch? I believe you misspelled endgame love interest. His father mentioned that the trick to cooking your best is to find a woman to give the food to, and Erina's God's Tongue is incredibly difficult to satisfy among even the best chefs.

Then Soma goes on to make her knees buckle.

The foreshadowing is anything but subtle.

[Buffalobiian]

Bitch and love interest need not be mutually exclusive.

This show is hilarious, but I'm laughing at it, not with it.. Hopefully that's intended.

How are other people from his school not orgasming repeatedly from tasting his and his dad's food though is beyond me. Are common people supposed to be insensitive to bad AND good food?

I'm pretty happy I'm not a God Tongue. To be easily satisfied is to be easily happy.

[shinta|hikari]

Are common people supposed to be insensitive to bad AND good food?

Yes. The common palate is pretty bad at judging food. If you add in personal food preferences (which severely limits what is "good" for normal people), the tasting gets even more biased and inaccurate. Pearls before swine.

[MFauli]

Ep 2 was better than the first one, but Im still not happy about the overly sexual presentation. It doesnt add to the show, it´s just tacked on. But the premise of cooking competitions keeps me interested.

And yes, Erina is a super-bitch. Great to see someone like her getting shaky knees from the "lowly commoner"´s food.

[David75]

Fanservice and sexual presentation aren't a problem in themselves. It's just that it's not done very well in that show.
That second ep as better though.

[Kraco]

I don't know what he really says in Japanese, but I simply can't accept Horrible's (Crunchy's) 100% generic and uninspired "Hope you liked it!" after getting used to "It wasn't much!" in the manga scanlation. Maybe it's a case of a good translation being better than the original? "Hope you liked it!" doesn't even make any sense considering the people were orgasming from eating the food right behind his back. No shit they liked it by that point, huh?

I don't actually have much to complain about. I thought I'd find Kirito's voice annoying, but I got used to it. Erina could have used a more arrogant sounding VA, but I think I'll get used to her as well. Maybe the fact she doesn't sound like a pureblood bitch is good for the possible love prospects Ryll was talking about.

[shinta|hikari]

"It wasn't much" is actually the more accurate translation of "Osomatsu." It is a Japanese expression used after treating someone to a meal. It literally means that the item, food in this case, is bad or ill-prepared, but that's just the Japanese being exaggeratedly humble. I guess they believed it wouldn't translate well to English and changed it.

[Kraco]

I guess they believed it wouldn't translate well to English and changed it.

More like after their extensive background check of zero seconds they didn't realise it's the dude's catchphrase that's going to be repeated in the story any number of times. "It wasn't much" really fits his personality. He was ready to bet on his cooking skills to beat the property sharks and was the only one ready to challenge Erina's taste test of the whole bunch of people. This is, in Crunchy's opinion, a wishy washy dude who meekly dares to plead people to like his cooking? The Crunchy translators must be working under a whip without any extra time in their hands.

[shinta|hikari]

Maybe they should've used "Glad you liked it" instead. That captures the intention of the expression "osomatsu sama" better.

[Kraco]

Episode 3 - HS


-- - - - -

Maybe they should've used "Glad you liked it" instead.

They actually changed it to that in this episode. I reckon "catchphase" is an unknown concept to the Crunchy folks who are only doing this for money, but it's still better than their original version, so whatever.

A jolly good episode. I had forgotten the early feelings of reading the manga, and this refreshed it in my mind. Mainly how amusing Yukihira was with his nonchalant and self-confident attitude. I had totally forgotten how things started between Yukihira and Megumi. Good comedy.